On the eve of that event the U.S. Department of Energy's FermiLab, has published information that strongly hints at the existence of the Higgs boson, but stops short of providing explicit proof of its existence.

The data comes courtesy of Tevatron, a smaller accelerator 4 miles in circumference. Located on the FermiLab grounds just east of Batavia, Ill., Tevatron was long the world's most powerful accelerator. Its tests actually wrapped up last year, before the accelerator was permanently shut down, after the U.S. decided being a world leader in scientific research was no longer among its spending priorities.

But Tevatron's last hurrah has offered a tantalize tease of what lies ahead with the LHC. Taking 10 years worth of data involving approximately 500 trillion particle collisions, the FermiLab teams offered up signs of elusive particle.

The Tevatron's greatest legacy may be in finding the first evidence of the Higgs boson.
[Source: FermiLab]

States Rob Roser a spokesman for one of the two Tevatron experiments, "Our data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson. But it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a discovery."

The Tevatron was able to determine with relative accuracy that the particle it observed was a Higgs boson. But the 1-in-550 chance that the finding was a statistical fluke (99.8 percent level of certainty) was unacceptably high in the laser-precise world of particle physics -- hence the LHC's firepower is necessary.

The Higgs boson is the only fundamental subatomic particle predicted by the Standard Model that has yet to be observed.

But it is not mere novelty that drives researchers to observe this particular particle, one must understand the Standard Model of particle physics. This pillar of physics theory predicts that the Higgs boson gives rise to the so-called Higgs mechanism, a sort of "sticky field" that coats particles like a spoon dipping through a jar of honey. This "sticky" effect is thought to give protons, neutrons, and electrons -- the building blocks of matter that most of us are familiar with -- their mass.

Unfortunately the Higgs boson needs very high beam energy and luminosity in order to be provide enough mass and conditions favorable to a Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is predicted to be less that 1.4 TeV, if the Standard Model is correct.

If the Higgs boson or similar electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism are not found to give the subatomic particles their mass, then it will be an intriguing open season for new theories. But if the Higgs boson is observed, mankind will be content in knowing that we have quantified yet another facet of reality as we know it.

Nobel Prize laureate Leon Lederman popularized the hunt for the Higgs boson in his book "The God Particle", which chronicled his work hunting for the particle at FermiLab. Professor Lederman originally intended the title to be "The Goddamn Particle" -- an expression of his frustration at the difficult observing it. The title was subsequently shortened and the phrase "God particle" stuck as a colloquialism for the complex theoretical particle.

A Nobel prize winner nicknamed the Higgs boson the "God particle", a less cheeky shortening of his longer name for it -- the "Goddamn particle". [Image Source: Gandee Vasan/Getty Images]

The latest results from his lab do little to end the frustration, but they do provide indication that a Higgs boson's mass would be between 115 and 135 GeV -- about 130 times the mass of the proton.

Now all that remains is to see what exactly the LHC has gleaned within that band of energies.

Was the Tevatron's blip, unlikely as it may be, a mere stastical fluctuation, or was it the first observation of the God particle? The data from the LHC should offer evidence towards which possibility is true.

Yes because Christians are the ones saying not to fund particle accelerators...

Any good Christian welcomes knowledge and exploring the world and universe God gave us. The existence of the Higgs Boson particle in no way validates or invalidates God. If it exists, it is merely there doing what God intended it to do. Provide mass for all things.

There is no "god", or "gods", and they didn't give us anything. It's ludicrous so many people in this (supposedly illuminated) day and age still believe in superstitions and nonsense.

In any case, christianity is provably not the one, true, only religion, as there were other cultures with other gods before the jews, sometimes with myths that were later co-opted by said jews. Soo... Not sure what you people get so worked up about. Also, science has shown that humanity did not originate in the middle east, but rather africa.

"Who is it that readies the skies and the earth as though they were two storehouses for your sustenance, and causes one to produce rain and the other, seeds? Is there anyone other than God Who could make the mighty skies and earth like two subservient storekeepers? In which case, thanks should be offered to Him alone."

"Who is the owner of your eyes and ears, the most precious of your members? From which workshop or shop did you obtain them? It is only your Sustainer that could give you these subtle and valuable eyes and ears. It is He Who creates and raises you, and gave you them. In which case, the only Sustainer is He. And the only one fit to be worshipped is He."

"Who is it that resurrects the dead earth and raises to life hundreds of thousands of sorts of dead beings? Who could bring this about apart from the True God and Creator of all the universe? It is surely He Who brings it about, He raises them to life. Since He is The Truth, He will not violate rights; He will send you to a Supreme Tribunal. He will raise you to life just as He raises to life the earth."

"Who other than God can administer and regulate this vast universe with perfect order as though it was a palace or a city? Since it can be none other than God, the Power which administers with extreme ease the vast universe and all its heavenly bodies is so faultless and infinite that it can have no need of partner or associate, assistance or help. The One Who administers the vast universe will not leave small creatures to other hands. That means you will be obliged to say: ‘God’".

Say: who is it that sustains you from the sky and from the earth? Or who is it that has power over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulate all affairs? They will say, "God". Say: Will you not then show piety [to Him]? * This is God, your Sustainer, The Truth..Quran 118

There a time when Religion was practiced as "science" and science was considered "magic"? Today, science is as it should be and more and more people realize the fallacy of religion (aka the "magic" behind it).

I just don't understand how one word answers everything for religious people. How does this happen? God. Why does this work? God. Who, What, God. God. God.

If you think you know everything, then why are we still looking for answers? Just so we can say, "Oh how nice! Looks like God decided to give us another piece of knowledge today"?

quote: I for one would like to understand why all the atoms that make up me choose to form, grow, and stay together instead of wander off in various directions. Why is everything not a vapor of particles? Id also like to know why a solar system is somewhat flat instead of the planets going around in all different orbits like the pictures of an atom at all different angles.

Science doesn't at all understand why the universe exists, and you probably know that. Many fascinating theories, none of which really involve 'god' but none the less just ideas, many of them radically different. We're also perhaps centuries from being able to test any of them.

We can't even come up with a unified theory of physics yet, much less understand the two most important elements of our universe: dark matter and energy. We're only a little better off then monkeys in truly understanding the universe.

Bleh our national priorities in America are all messed up. Washington is happy to throw money into a system cranking out more useless bankers and stupid service jobs while failing to ever address the real problem. It's a simple problem too that slips from the grasp of everyone in Washington.

Our money flows out of our hands and into other Countries pockets. In order to reverse the flow, you need to produce something of worth. The only way to produce something of worth is through solid engineering, bright minds and... science! By producing something of worth, you reverse the flow. Money comes back into our Country and the economy flourishes.

Yet, they ignore this, and throw money at stuff that is pointless.

Give us engineers, give us scientists, give us a lust for knowledge and a passion for discovery and you will captivate minds into bringing a spark back into our great nation. It is a travesty our nation fails to see this.

RIP Tevatron. May it serve not as a tombstone but a constant reminder of why we need to get back to the basics that made us great before.

This particle offers tremendous potential. Finally, a complete Standard Model and potential to help edge string theorists further towards their pursuit of the "deep" truth. We can't stop at a particle, we must go deeper down the hole! Maybe, just maybe, some child in America out there will read about this and thing... Hey, maybe there's more to this boson than meets the eye. And thus, we hatch the next great scientific mind.

quote: Our money flows out of our hands like a raging torrent into other Countries pockets.

Fixed.

It doesn't help when your government spent trillions? Bailing out failing companies when that money could have been used to create more jobs via the creation of new or upgraded infrastructure like new Roads, Power Plants, heck give everyone fiber internet for that much, the Aussies for instance are doing it for 43 billion...

The Aussies also have the great, stupid internet filter. Sorry, I don't want that kind of censorship in our nation and our Citizens should be willing to fight to the death over it. Should. Most aren't. They're too busy watching primetime television sucking on garbage while the electrons rule their lives.

Roads, Power Plants and Fiber internet wouldn't have solved anything. Roads would have put people to work temporarily so they could piss their earned money into what? More "stuff" that was made from overseas--so the end benefactor would once again be foreign nations.

Power Plants would never make any real progress due to all the tree hugging hippies pissing an moaning about the environmental impact in some area they don't even live in, have no relatives in and zero attachment to other than their philosophical lunacy.

Fiber Internet would ultimately stifle all productivity. People would take that free fiber internet and... download more porn on it. They'd also take a sliver of their money and buy more hard drives--the cheap kinds... made overseas. They have to save all that precious porn. It isn't like the internet is flooded with it or anything.

So no, none of those solutions would have solved much. It would have lead to people being as poor as they were before, a little bit fatter and a little bit less likely to develop prostate cancer... sooner. ;)

Hmm it seems I'm partially mistaken, I apologize. It hasn't passed... yet. However, the Australian Communications and Media Authority does maintain and have the ability to blacklist sites for the country it deems inappropriate--correct me if I'm wrong.

Since the US functions using borrowed money, in reality that flow isn't actually directed as much outwards as it is inwards... ;)

Your oversized military, warmongering demagogue politicians and badly designed social infrastructure is is what's truly hampering you guys. As an example of the latter, the reliance on vampiric insurance companies to fund health care in your country for example is causing said health care to cost around 2x more than anywhere else in the western world for similar level of treatment.

If you people weren't so paranoidly afraid of the word "social", and like pretty much ALL of Europe instituted socially funded health care (like you already do with police, courts, military and so on), costs would plummet and productivity and quality of life throughout society would rise when everyone can seek treatment for their problems rather than get crippled by them.

Point is, europe is as socialist as China is Communist. While there are still some elements left over, as far as markets are concirned it's pretty much capitalism/fend for yourself.

Why it's going wrong in the US is because the US is as capitalist as china is communist. In reality, it's the US who's the more socialist country.

Remember: socialism is nothing more then the equalizing the of 99% and setting up the power structure for the 1%, in order to bring in communism which shaves off another 0.9%, which would be the inner party/state. The redistribution of wealth.

Socialism is primarily about redistributing wealth and equality of outcomes, no matter what, and state control of capital. Public roads, police, military; those are all basic functions of state that even many libertarians would agree to.. after a little arguing over the wisdom of public roads/infrastructure (there's ways of introducing private sector involvement there asides from tolls).

The only real point you made, despite accusing someone else of "stupid talking points," was public schools. Look at what teacher unions generally do, look at the state of our public schools (where we spend the most of any country and get Washington DC schools as a result), and tell me that its an unambiguous 'win' for us there. There's a strong argument for a voucher-based privatized school system and regulated with minimum educational outcome requirements.

Socialism is also about keeping that damn 1% restricted to opening their mouths. In the US, they are also allowed to open their wallets and politicians are not put under severe restrictions as to the amount, source and conditions placed on any funding they receive directly or indirectly (indirectly being those disgusting SuperPacs that can be anonymously setup).

Comparing European Socialism to anything like communism is ridiculous. Communism is anathema to any and all democracies.

The reason we spend more is because the European nations force our companies to give them huge discounts on drugs and supplies--and in turn, our companies pass those costs on to our citizens through increased prices and rates.

We are indirectly subsidizing Europe's false security.

It doesn't matter, though, as the EU is going to implode soon enough anyways. The Europeans brag about how we subsist on debt, yet every single day more and more debt is being cranked out to feed a system over there doomed to fail.

The one thing Europe is doing right is CERN. Thank goodness for that, too. The American lust for material things and money is sickening to say the least and we could learn from Europeans on that.

Insurance companies don't provide the healthcare, they provide a financial service based around risk assessment. It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to be treated in the emergency room because of the insurance, it's because of the healthcare system.

Healthcare costs do not go down by simply giving more people insurance, the bills are still there, only covered by public money. Costs also do not go down when money is stolen from people through a mandate which demands payment into a system regardless of participation. Costs do not go down when 26 year olds can stay on their parents' plans, either.

Yes we socially cover things like emergency services because they serve the community as a whole. There is no public interest with my health, it is my body and my interest.

quote: into a system cranking out more useless bankers and stupid service jobs

At least bankers have degrees that qualify them for a variety of jobs, all of which are fundamentally good for society, like allocating savings in form of loans, advising people on retirement funds, etc.

I'd sooner point to liberal arts colleges cranking out legions of art history majors and wonder why the nation subsidizes those sorts of guys. They're useful for nothing in the real world beyond low level retail management, unless they're Picasso, and I'd rather fund legions of middling engineers and miss out on the occasional Picasso that doesn't manage to make a name for himself entirely on his own.

I wouldn't entirely blame the system. I think cultural pressures are a strong part of it too. The West prizes individuality - "follow your dreams," "do what you enjoy," "let your heart lead you." Consequently you end up with a lot of people training for things they like to do, not necessarily things which need doing.

Eastern (Confucian) culture prizes sacrifice for the betterment of your social group (family, company, neighborhood, nation). In the West it's subtly ridiculed - e.g. the guy who wanted to be a painter, but became a doctor because he knew he'd have to provide for his family. Or the businessman who works from 8am to 8pm, and gets home after his kids are in bed. The message being that the Western way is better.

I think many in the West use the extreme cases of Eastern behavior to justify their extreme cases of Western behavior. The truth is, either taken to the extreme is bad.

quote: At least bankers have degrees that qualify them for a variety of jobs, all of which are fundamentally good for society, like allocating savings in form of loans, advising people on retirement funds, etc.

The good ones do good, and they are far and few. Trust me, I know all too well. I've been around and in the industry my whole life and seen it from the inside. For every honest guy there are at least four or five waiting to stab them in the back and eat their children.

The banks aren't lending right now after receiving tons of money. It's not like they should be--they were lending irresponsibly before everything imploded due to irresponsible legislation forcing them to lend to everyone that had a pulse.

Liberal arts degrees are for the most part pretty useless. They teach stuff you can learn on your own if you really want to--and if you have the talent to make the degree work you probably don't need the degree in the first place.

Hence, we need more engineers and scientists. People with brains on their shoulders that can actually produce something of value with their hands. People that can lead everyone else to a better, brighter more industrialized future.

I agree with all of that, even the eat-their-children part. A few times I've been offered a chance to get in to the finance sector in different ways, but at the end of the day I always shy away; I'd rather be able to sleep at night.

quote: Our money flows out of our hands and into other Countries pockets. In order to reverse the flow, you need to produce something of worth. The only way to produce something of worth is through solid engineering, bright minds and... science!

unless product of your solid engineering and science get stolen and copied by china. you get the costs of R&D, china gets $$$.

quote: The Tupolev Tu-4 ... was a reverse-engineered copy of the U.S.-made Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

The Soviet Union used the metric system, thus 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) thick sheet aluminum and proper rivet lengths were unavailable. The corresponding metric-gauge metal was thicker; as a result, the Tu-4 weighed about 3,100 lb (1,400 kg) more than the B-29, with a corresponding decrease in range and payload.

(Lots more in the wiki if you want to get a good laugh about excessive copying.)

Yes! I agree with this what happened to the time when people looked up to and dreamed of being scientists, philosophers, a human of critical thinking! Now I'm not trying to insult people because I know there are those people out there like i described but I find that too often today people look up to the likes of gangsters/thugs, snookie like celebrities, and just overall stupid people. I want to live in a world where critical thinking is the norm where people live everyday to contribute to the advancement of humanity im hopeful this will happen in my lifetime I want the world to rediscover the passion for knowledge and science there is so much we can create....well I'm done ranting.

I know, it's pretty pathetic that the Democrats were given the choice in trying to balance the budget, and they wouldn't reduce funding for walfare and abortion clinics, and chose instead to make a deal to defund Nasa, Fermilab, and other science projects. The GOP fought to keep those budgets, but the Democrats wouldn't give at all when it came to welfare and abortion funding. So, now we get more lazy people getting paid to sit at home and get fat and more fat lazy people to get away from their own lack of self control.

Democrat in the White House, Democrat control of the Senate. Can't honestly make the argument that the party in control of 2/3 of the elected government really went to the mat to fight for those things. Obama has obviously had little interest in NASA from the very start, for example. Fact is, the Democrats agenda has been focused elsewhere, allowing the hard science that Democrats pretend to be the strongest supporters of to fall to the wayside. Too busy finding the next Solyndra (aka, rewarding favored lobbies) and pushing his specific version of universal healthcare.

So, while the Democrats by and large may not have made a conscious effort to try to kill any specific program, Obama hasn't spent one red cent of political capital to try to save any of it. Nor will he this year; he's in a fight for his survival.

Yep, those Democrats and their baby killing... WHEN WILL THEY STOP IT?!!? I digress... Also, purely statistically speaking, Republican voters are much more likely to be fat (and therefore by your logic, lazy) than Democrat voters. This is a statistical fact, so... do with it what you will. Cheers!

Any engineer worthy of the name is likely to be the laziest S.O.B. around. He'll work for hours to find a way to save 10 seconds... Necessity is NOT the mother of invention, it is laziness. Go out and pick some cotton, then comb out the seeds, THEN you'll see what the cotton gin was all about.

On the contrary. From my experiences, conservatives, especially true Christians, work harder and are more likely to be stronger. In many cases, like me at 5'8" and 225, they're classified as "obese" by this stupid BMI thing, but mostly strong and hard working rather than the lazy fat-asses that sit on the couch and expect to have everything brought to them.

The term "fat" refers to the weak willed, pathetic, lazy idiots who refuse to work. Hard working people typically aren't fat. big, maybe. Strong, definitely. Some liberal "health nuts" don't seem to understand the difference. They seem to think that the only thing that matters is a long life. Who cares if someone lives to 110 if they can't hardly get out of bed after 80. What kind of life is that?

Don't you think that referring to people as illiterate trash is rather wrong? I mean, if they are illiterate, then their teachers, their family and the society which you are part of has failed them. If they are trash, then ditto.

Everyone needs a helping hand to be the best they can be at some level. Some people start with nothing and have nobody to act as a good role model.

Maybe America needs to realise that it's social problems are a ticking time bomb and hiding behind the American Way will not protect you from that when the world falls to shit around you.

quote: Some people start with nothing and have nobody to act as a good role model.

Isn't that the parent's fault and not society as a whole?Unless society forced that child to be born into a home with 'nothing' and no good role model, then the problem lies with the parents.

If mentally/financially unfit people were not allowed to have children, then you wouldn't have a person with 'nothing' that needs a helping hand.

Everyone is slightly to blame for this. The biggest fault going to religions that say that using contraception is a sin ( we went forth and multiplied, it's time to reign it in). The other big contributor is that kids can be used for money from the government ( you have x kids you get y dollars). Some people, that should not be raising any kids, churn out plenty for this reason alone.

If you really want to fix the major woes of society, you have to do something no one has the will to implement.Licensing for children. You should need to pass some kind of test that proves that you are fit to be a parent, before you can have a baby.

And yet Europe manages to provide a much bigger safety net for that "illiterate trash of society", and still fund CERN's research. So perhaps you've presented a false choice here. I'd suggest....

Isn't it crazy that more and more resources get channeled into national defense (without increasing security significantly over comparable Western nations) and yet meaningful projects with some amazing science get their funding cancelled.